Sri Lanka: Tamils demand genocide investigation

About 10,000 Tamils protested in Geneva on March 10 to investigate genocide allegations against the Sri Lankan government. Photo via Sri Lanka Brief.

Addressing the United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva on March 14, Ananthi Sasitharan said: “We request this assembly calls for an international investigation on genocide, and as an immediate step, to come out with a mechanism to stop the ongoing genocide of Eelam Tamils.”

The Tamil ethnic minority in Sri Lanka is largely based on the island's north and east. With Tamils facing discrimination and violent pogroms, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam waged a decades-long armed struggle for an independent state.

It was defeated in 2009 by the Sri Lankan Army, which was accused of widespread war crimes.

Sasitharan was elected to Sri Lanka’s Northern Provincial Council as a representative of the Tamil National Alliance. She said she was “disappointed” with the draft resolution on Sri Lanka put forward by the US.

She said that the resolution does not address the main problems facing Tamils. “The root problem is the 60-year-old genocide against our people,” she said. “This genocide is still going on without a war. We call it structural genocide.”

On March 10, there was a demonstration in Geneva by 10,000 Tamils demanding an international investigation of genocide and a United Nations-conducted plebiscite enabling Tamils to vote on independence for their homeland, Tamil Eelam.

The US-sponsored resolution calls on the Sri Lankan government to “conduct an independent and credible investigation into allegations of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law”.

Since the Sri Lankan state is the main perpetrator of human rights violations in Sri Lanka, this is a call for the government to investigate itself.

The draft resolution mentions a recommendation made by Navi Pillay, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, that there should be an international investigation “in the absence of a credible national process with tangible results”.

However, the resolution contains no commitment to establish such an investigation.

The draft resolution expresses “serious concern at the continuing reports of violations of human rights in Sri Lanka, including sexual and gender-based violence, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture and violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly”.

It expresses alarm at “the rapid rise in violence and discrimination on the basis of religion or belief, particularly against members of religious minority groups in Sri Lanka, including Hindus, Muslims and Christians”.

However, the resolution makes no mention of the oppression of the Tamil people. This is bizarre, given that discrimination and repression against the Tamils led to a three decades-long war for an independent Tamil homeland.

Since 2009, Tamil areas have been under military occupation. This is the source of most of the human rights violations that the resolution condemns.

The draft resolution talks of Sri Lanka as a “unified land”, implying opposition to the right of the Tamils to national self-determination.

However, it does call on the Sri Lankan government to “fulfil its public commitments, including on the devolution of authority”.

This is a reference to the central government's bid to starve the elected Northern Provincial Council of resources and disregard its decisions. The resolution urges the government to “provide the Northern Provincial Council and its Chief Minister with the resources and authority necessary to govern”.

The US government, while rejecting the right of the Tamils to self-determination, appears to believe the Sri Lankan government should make some concessions to the Tamils, such as allowing the Northern Provincial Council, the representative body for the predominantly Tamil north of the island, to function properly.

The US may have an ulterior motive. Tamara Kunanayakam, the former Sri Lankan permanent representative at the United Nations, said the US would like to establish a military base in Sri Lanka. She said the US is using the issue of human rights as a pretext to pressure the Sri Lankan government to agree.

Kunanayakam has said Sri Lanka needs an “internal democratic transformation” to deprive the US of an excuse for pressuring Sri Lanka, and perhaps eventually imposing sanctions.

This would have to include giving equal rights to ethnic and religious minorities. She says: “We need to find a solution that accords equal status to the minorities and ensure democratic transformation. We must eliminate privileges for a single group to create such equality.”

However the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, which promotes chauvinism among the Sinhalese ethnic majority as a tool to win mass support, seems unlikely to agree to any such “democratic transformation”.

From GLW issue 1002

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Sri Lanka’s move for international peacekeepers to intervene during its civil war is now seen as a monumental mistake by most in the country
Anti-government protesters blow whistles at a Bangkok rally. Caretaker Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul recently asked the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to mediate in the escalating political conflict.

In Thailand anti-government protesters blow whistles at a Bangkok rally. Caretaker Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul recently asked the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to mediate in the escalating political conflict.

Kavi Chongkittavorn recently wrote about the dangers of Thailand asking the UN to mediate in the current crisis (“Thailand must be careful what it wishes for”, Opinion, March 3). As someone from Sri Lanka – whose Buddhist culture is closely related to Thailand’s – I suggest that Thailand look closely at Sri Lanka’s experience. In the 1990s, then-president Chandrika Kumaratunga permitted Norway and the United Nations to intervene to help solve Sri Lanka’s civil war. That move is now widely seen in Sri Lanka as a monumental miscalculation.

You don’t need to go far back into history to learn the lessons. Over the past few days Sri Lanka has been fighting a gigantic battle to stop United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) head Navi Pillay from abusing her power of office to mount a UN investigation into alleged war crimes by the Sri Lankan military when it crushed the terrorist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a final battle in May 2009.

Pillay last month released a report calling for an international investigation into these alleged war crimes. The Sri Lankan government responded by stating that the UN High Commissioner’s recommendations, “reflect the preconceived, politicised and prejudicial agenda which she has relentlessly pursued with regard to Sri Lanka”, and in a 18-page document accused her of giving “scant or no regard to the domestic processes ongoing in Sri Lanka”. The government has also criticised the report for arriving at conclusions in a “selective and arbitrary manner”.

Sri Lanka’s criticism of Pillay is not new. But, commentaries in both mainstream and online media in Sri Lanka indicate a hardening of attitudes in Sri Lanka against her perceived bias and alleged abuse of her power as head of UNHRC. She has had a much easier ride from the international media, which has been sympathetic to most of the propaganda put out by LTTE supporters in the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora over the past 30 years.

Pillay’s report is being officially tabled at the 25th sessions of the UNHRC in Geneva this week, but she refused Sri Lanka’s request that its response be attached as an appendix to the report. The United States has indicated – supported by the EU and India – that they may table a resolution at the meeting to establish an independent international investigation into alleged war crimes and human rights violations in Sri Lanka, which the government is sure to reject.

“How many of the bullying countries accusing Sri Lanka of crimes against humanity and war crimes have clean hands or a flawless record?” asks Senaka Weeraratna, a Sri Lankan lawyer and international affairs analyst.

“What we see today in Western-dominated international organisations such as the United Nations, and related bodies such as the UNHRC, ICC and the like are proceedings conducted on an inquisitorial footing, witch hunts aimed at devastating the target country or individual – usually of non-European descent – and thereby perverting the course of justice. No quarter is given to the other party until it submits to the political will of the bullying nations” argues Weeraratne.

“It is a shameless display of brute power making a mockery of institutional rules and procedure. The targeted country is assumed to be guilty right from the start ruling out any mitigating circumstances. It is virtually a re-enactment of the Inquisition, [but] under the auspices of the United Nations rather than the Catholic Church.”

It is not only Sri Lankans who are complaining about the UNHRC and Pillay’s tactics. Anti-war activists in the West and supporters of the former Libyan regime and that of Syria have also pointed out how these UN agencies, and particularly UNHRC under Pillay, are practising double standards to promote Western imperial designs.

A question often asked by Sri Lankans is why Pillay has not called upon George W Bush, Tony Blair and David Cameron to account for alleged war crimes committed by the US, UK and Nato forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. During her visit to Sri Lanka last year, she said that UNHRC had indeed questioned these countries on certain human rights issues and they had responded. But what Sri Lankan journalist didn’t press her on was why she could not do the same with Sri Lanka, rather than indulging in a public spat and witch-hunt?

Most people in Sri Lanka believe that what she is actually doing is opening up old wounds, an action completely counterproductive to promoting reconciliation between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. Nor is it helping to improve human rights in Sri Lanka, where a government that is threatened by what it sees as an international conspiracy for regime change has cracked down heavily on internal dissent and freedom of expression.

It’s not only Pillay whom Sri Lankans are sceptical about. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon is also seen by most in Sri Lanka as lacking neutrality. In 2010, he appointed a panel led by former Indonesian Attorney General Marzuki Darusman to investigate human rights violation in Sri Lanka during the final battle of the war in 2009. The report, based on mainly third-hand sources was critical of both the government and the LTTE, but, since the latter was vanquished in battle, the government stood to be the only accused party called to account. The government heavily criticised the report as being biased.

Though supposed to be an advisory report for Moon’s use only, and not sanctioned by the UN General Assembly, he made it public. Now Pillay has used it extensively in her latest report submitted to the current UNHRC sessions.

“Her findings about the armed conflict in Sri Lanka are based on the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts Report, or the Darusman Report, which is not even a valid UN document,” Sri Lankan presidential spokesman Mohan Samaranayake explained in a media interview this week. “Above all they have not furnished any evidence as regards these war crime allegations so that the government could investigate them in conformity with its justice system.”

“It is our position that it is the government’s primary responsibility to resolve domestic issues. Unwarranted internationalisation of such issues would only undermine the local reconciliation process in Sri Lanka; a process that is still ongoing” warned Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Minister Mohan Samarasinghe, in an address to the UNHRC sessions last year, where the US and its allies pushed through an anti-Sri Lanka resolution.

Referring to that, he argued, “targeting Sri Lanka unfairly in this manner would only serve to further polarise the affected parties, particularly considering that there is no imminent threat to the human security of its citizens or to international peace and security. The bona-fides and the objectivity of the proponents of action on Sri Lanka may, therefore, be questioned“.

As Sri Lanka fights another battle this month at the UNHRC, Weeraratna argues that Pillay’s methods are harming human rights and increasing the credibility gap of UN agencies in the eyes of the international community (which is not just the US, EU and its allies). Instead he argues that the UNHRC should adopt the Japanese model of post-war crisis resolution.

“The Japanese approach advocated by the Buddhist Prince Shotuku to use the method of consensus and dialogue, and not allow the accused party to lose face, is a far more enlightened approach to resolution of complex human rights issues than the ‘ burning at the stake’ inquisitorial approach of the West,” said Weeraratna. “It is the employment of double standards and devious methods to achieve ulterior political ends of powerful Western actors that have resulted in the moral collapse of the UN and related agencies.”

Perhaps, it would be a good idea for Thailand and Sri Lanka to work together in devising a method of resolving political crisis in the 21st century, drawing on their shared Buddhist cultural heritage. Maybe then, we could not only solve our own problems peacefully but also offer the rest of the world a better model of conflict resolution.

Kalinga Seneviratne is a Sri Lanka-born journalist, media analyst and international communications lecturer based in Singapore.

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